Tag: escapade

Great Time at Escapade ’19

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Food, Friends, Learning, Traveling

As members of the Escapees RV Club, Kathy and I attended our 2nd “Escapade” this past week. The first one we attended was in Essex Junction (Burlington area), Vermont back in summer of 2016. This year’s Escapade was in Tucson at the Pima County Fairgrounds.

Aerial View of The RV Park at Pima County Fairgrounds

The annual Escapade is held in different locations around the country. 2018 was in Sedalia, Missouri while next year’s event will be held in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Holding the rally in different locations allows club members in different areas of the country to attend without having to travel extreme distances.

The rally is an opportunity to; renew friendships with other travelers you haven’t seen in a long while, enjoy some great regional food, attend as many as 10 or 15 informational seminars scheduled over a 4 day period, visit the Marketplace where vendors of RV equipment and supplies display and sell their products, take a tour of nearly 100 new and used RV’s on the lot, and attendees can even volunteer as shuttle cart drivers, hospitality hosts, parking attendants, morning coffee crew members, and lots of other opportunities.

Here are some pictures of various parts of the event. We took over the Pima County Fairgrounds with 830 recreational vehicles (RV’s) and just about 2500 attendees.

As usual, if you click on any of the individual pictures below, it will open into a larger image so you can see more detail.

  • Our home for the week
  • One of the vendors on the Midway selling loading equipment
  • RV’s come in all years and sizes
  • The main hall with coffee area, registration, member services, and marketplace down at the end
  • Part of the Opening Ceremony
  • I especially like this Prevost bus along with the vintage VW bus
  • Enjoying each evening’s entertainment
  • The “American Rogues” Celtic Band
  • Listening to a seminar on Lithium batteries by Sue Valentine
  • More vintage bus RV’s
  • Taking in a few of the free Margaritas at the new RV display (by RV Country)
  • Kathy’s Zumba Workout
  • Taking in a seminar on RV Safety
  • Connie & Dennis sharing good times with Kathy
  • Creativity at the Chili Cookoff
  • Morning coffee & Donuts
  • Guess Who?
  • Dillon with ShadePro fixing our patio awning
  • Ham Radio operator and avid RV’er
  • Sunset on the grounds
  • Quick look over the polo field parking area

Here’s a couple videos of the evening entertainment. This evening’s video features “The American Rogues” (Sorry the audio is not nearly as impressive as it was at the live presentation). You could feel the drums beating and the rafters shaking.

The American Rogues

Here’s a video of the “Redhead Express” – and 5 of these 6 band members are siblings!

The Redhead Express

Thanks for coming along. We are blessed to be able to live the full-time RV lifestyle and we hope you enjoy riding along with us on our adventures.

So long for now!

Where We’re Heading To Next

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Friends, Ham Radio, Sightseeing, Traveling, Working

It’s March 18, 2019 and we are currently parked at the Pima County (Tucson, AZ) Fairgrounds with about 2000 other Escapee RV Club members enjoying the annual Escapade national gathering.

One of the evening entertainment sessions at 59th Escapade – Tucson, AZ

Since we “hit the road” and started our full-time RV lifestyle in late 2016, we had been Workamping our way around the country. We work at campgrounds or RV parks offering about 15-20 hours per week in exchange for rent-free living at the park and it typically includes all our utilities, cable TV, wifi, laundry and sometimes discounts at the park store or nearby attractions.

But being members of the Escapees RV Club, we were able to take advantage of getting on a “Wait List” for any of their parks. We put our names on the Wait List for the parks in; Wauchula FL, Hondo TX, Casa Grande AZ, Benson AZ, and Pahrump NV. We figured whichever park had our name at the top of the list first (waiting lists are often many years long), that’s the park we’d call “home” for the winter.

In addition to having a place to winter regularly, the “home base” would provide us a place to go at very little additional cost (only electric and propane) to be should we need a lengthy stay for say, recovery from a medical procedure – planned or otherwise.

As it turned out, we rose to the top of the list at Rover’s Roost in late 2017, accepted the lifetime lease agreement, continued our Workamping commitments for spring, summer, and fall of 2018, and then arrived here November 1st to be “on vacation” for the winter months.

We’ve spent a very relaxing and enjoyable winter at our leased lot at the Escapees Rover’s Roost RV Park in Casa Grande, AZ. I’ll share more with you in later posts about our time here at “The Roost” both having fun with our new friends along with some of the projects we’ve completed to our “home on the road”.

Our winter home at Rover’s Roost RV Park at Casa Grande, AZ

But now it’s early spring and it’s time to leave “The Roost” for the summer season (it gets WAY too hot here) and head north to cooler climates.

This year, we are heading to Montana to work at an Army Corp of Engineers campground as Park Hosts. We’ll be at Ft. Peck Dam Downstream Campground for 3 months (April, May, and June) and then we will move a little east to our next Workamping commitment at DC Booth Historic Fish Hatchery in Spearfish South Dakota working as visitor center and museum employees. We’ll be there July, August, and September.

Here’s a map of our trip north next month. This is subject to change as we have over 120 places on our Bucket List and we’ll try to hit many of them along the way, even if it takes us off track a hundred miles or so. We’re not in any big hurry to get north, we’ll hopefully just follow the spring thaw!

If you’d like to check up on us as we travel and see where we are at any given moment in time, you can just go to www.aprs.fi and type my ham radio license number WB8BHK-9 into the Search box and it’ll return a Google map with our exact location at that moment. We’d love for you to follow along!

I admit I’ve been a bit lax the last few months and haven’t posted blog entries as often as I would have liked to. I’ll work to improve my postings as we travel north and we appreciate you following along.

Oh, by the way …. we’ve designed a new logo to market our brand. Whatta ‘ya think?

Pooper Pumper Day

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Camping, Equipment

We’ve been here at the Champlain Valley Expo Center (fairgrounds) in Essex Junction, VT since last Thursday and although we’ve had electric and water hookups, we’ve not had the luxury of a sewer connection.  There are about 1000 RV’s here and the black water tanks on board only hold so much.

So the organizers have made arrangements for all these RV’s to be pumped out.  Depending on what day you arrived on site, determined what day the pumpers would be at your rig to pump.  We arrived Thursday so our pump day was the following Monday.

Now, on Sunday night just after Kathy finished up her shower, the gray water (sink/shower/kitchen) tank was now filled to capacity.  So no more showers or running sink water down the drain.

2016-07-25 11.39.56

So, the pumper came just in time, early Monday morning and in only just a few short minutes rolled his “bowl” over to the coach, pulled the drain valves, and pumped it all into his tank truck and then moved on to the rig next door.  There were/are multiple trucks here each day and I know these guys are pretty “pooped” by the end of the day.

Some pictures from the Escapade

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Blogging, Equipment, Friends, Learning

The “show” is really a great learning experience disguised in fun.  Take a look at the photos below and read the captions and you’ll be able to get a better idea of what’s going on here in Vermont this week at the Champlain Valley Exposition Center

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We had the honor of meeting and listening to 89 year old Kay Peterson who, with her husband Joe back in 1979 co-founded the Escapees RV club with just 24 members.  She was delightful to listen to and she’s sharp as a tack.  By the way, Kathy and I joined last fall and we are member number 126874 (It’s grown a bit, eh?)

We’ve met a lot of folks here and learned not only in classes, but from our fellow RV’ers as well.  There is entertainment and hospitality events every night and LOTS of BIG BEAUTIFUL (and very expensive) motorhomes to walk through and dream about.

“Mac The Fire Guy” taught us about fire safety, how to safely exit an RV in the event of fire, which smoke and carbon monoxide alarms to have in our coach along with the correct type of fire extinguisher to keep on board.  He emphasized the main goal is to exit safely, not to save the RV, (that’s why you have insurance)

Jim and George taught us all about tires, the importance of having your rig weighed on ALL FOUR CORNERS (so you know the weight on EACH tire) and how to determine the correct tire inflation pressure based on the load being carried.

This is only Monday night, right now Kathy is in the General Assembly Room listening (along with about 2000 others) to The Marlins musical group while I’m over in another part of the building using the free WiFi so I could upload these pictures.

We still have Tuesday and Wednesday to learn and have fun and then we’ll head out Thursday morning.

More later – So long for now,

WOW! Adirondacks & Lake Champlain

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Camping, Friends, Learning

So our 2nd day found us along I-90 only a short way (about 60 miles) to our exit onto RT 365, then RT 20, then RT 8 all along the Adirondack Scenic ByWay.  It was a beautiful day and there was very little traffic and we enjoyed the trip through the mountain villages (they call them hamlets), across the bridge over Lake Champlain, and on into Burlington, VT.

 

Our site for the night was North Beach Campground.  North Beach is a city-owned park with loads of heavily shaded camp sites and a few thousand feet of sandy beach along pristine Lake Champlain peppered with both sailboats and powerboats.

As we backed into space 5, our neighbor in space 4 came right out and welcomed us and with a big smile on her face told us her name was Linda and her husband Ron.  They too are Escapees and actually will be working (as volunteers staff) at the event this week.

Linda and Ron invited us to climb in their car and head on over to “scope out” the Exposition Center for our short 20 minute trip in the morning when we take our rigs over to park there for the next seven days.

So far the weather’s been great, the RV has operated flawlessly and Kathy and I are smiling, it’s been a great day.

More to report tomorrow or the next day.

Off to the Escapade

by Herb & Kathy, posted in Blogging, Camping

We left about 6:30 am from home in Ohio and heading toward Essex Junction, VT.  A beautiful day for a drive, light fog early in the morning and a heavy dew on the coach, but that cleared up in short order.2016-07-19 06.34.55

Kathy and I recently joined a group called “Escapees” which is an RV’er group of people, many of whom are full-timers either retired and now living in their RV or still working and living and even raising a family on the road.  It’s an interesting lifestyle that we’ve come to learn about.

The “Escapade” is an annual gathering of like minded folks (this is the 56th annual) to learn all that there is to learn about RV’ing and the RV lifestyle.  The week will be filled with lots of fun interspersed with educational forums, demonstrations, and more.

Up I-71 and then across I-90 through eastern Ohio, Pennsylvania and into New York State where we had a reservation at Hejamada RV Park, near Montezuma, NY.  Lots of “elbow” room here, owner tells us they have about 200 sites and about 85 of them are seasonals (permanent campers).  2016-07-19 19.31.46She put us on a lot out in the middle which, if it had been a hot and muggy day like it was when we left Ohio, would have been rough.  But the weather here is delightful, about 75 and low humidity.  We had no close neighbors.

This campground has a small fishing lake (pond) along with a bar and a snack bar that are both open on the weekends.  The outdoor pool is about 20’x40′ and is sparkling clean.!!

Believe it or not, Kathy and I did take a bike ride (her 2nd time out and my maiden voyage) and neither of us fell!.  However we both think that we need better seats with more padding.  I won’t comment on her, but I don’t remember my bottom hurting like this when I was a kid riding my 10-speed.  Could it be maybe the extra weight I’m carrying?

When we rode over to check out the pool and the snack bar/bar building, we passed alongside a couple of HUGE Prevost coaches.  They were both pulling large box trailers and what they had brought along with them were two very sharp looking Model A’s.  Quite the contrast; the very old (yet shiny) and simple gasoline powered vehicles alongside these mammoth diesel, powerful homes on wheels.

A late dinner of tossed salad and meat loaf, a beautiful sunset, and off to Burlington in the morning.